The public is being asked to weigh in on the Toronto police board’s first policy on carding, which seeks to put community members and police on a near equal footing when it comes to the informal interactions.

Tuesday’s meeting at police headquarters will be the last broad public consultation before police board members are officially asked to vote on the policy at a meeting Thursday.

The policy asks the chief to create new procedures based on the principle that “the effect of Contacts on the community is as important as the purpose of those policing practices.”

The board acknowledges the controversial police practice, shown by several Star investigations to disproportionately target people with black and brown skin, has had a “negative impact on public trust.” However, the document goes on to say that “the collection, retention, use and disclosure of information gathered for bona fide reasons can be a legitimate and effective policing tool.”

Many youth don’t know the interaction is voluntary and that they are free to leave, and not answer any questions, unless an officer has a reasonable suspicion to detain them. Police will now be required to pass that information on to the individuals they stop.

The policy also says the “contacts can’t be a pretext to find reasonable grounds that would justify an investigative detention.”

The board is also calling for bias-free training and more supervision of all officers as well as counselling when it’s warranted.

And the policy puts an emphasis on documentation that ensures public safety, and not on the volume of people stopped, which has previously been a factor in performance reviews.

After numerous Star investigations, Toronto police did their own internal review of carding and came out with the Police and Community Engagement Review (PACER), a report which contained 31 recommendations to improve carding.

The changes will be phased in over three years and include doubling the time officers spend in community response units; diversity training and early intervention for officers who show bias; more legal training; and public reports showing a breakdown of contact cards by race and demographics.

Police have also rebranded carding and are now referring to the personal information recorded as “community safety notes” because the details are written down in an officer’s notebook instead of a form or “card.”

Until PACER, that data was being retained indefinitely. Now police say they will purge the record after seven years.

Despite the changes, many critics say the practice should be stopped because it harms community relations with police and violates the Charter.

“The Board as a matter of policy should absolutely ban such operations and intelligence gathering,” lawyer Paul Copeland, with the Law Union of Ontario, wrote to the board.

Meanwhile, activists are continuing a human rights campaign to stop carding altogether. Members of the Law Union are meeting with community members in areas of the city where there has been a significant presence of officers with the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS) or high carding activity.

They’ve joined with lawyers from the Human Rights Legal Support Centre to find individuals who are willing to come forward and be part of a complaint to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.

“It is believed that if a person were targeted because of their race, and the information collected resulted from a Code breach, then the continuing retention of the information could be a Code breach,” said Grace Vaccarelli, a lawyer with the support centre. “So if someone is approached because of racial profiling, then everything that flows from that is then tainted.”

All of the legal work is being done pro bono.

Vilko Zbogar, a lawyer and Law Union member, said that during a recent meeting with about two dozen youth in Malvern, all but a couple had been carded including an 11-year old.

“To see this is happening to kids as young as 11 or younger — I read about it in The Star — but to see people affected by it is amazing,” he says.

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